【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障13系列】【13-15】经管

spencerX

【速度】


【计时一】

Why Is The Government In The Flood Insurance Business?
by David Kestenbaum

There's a quick, one-word explanation for why the federal government started selling flood insurance: Betsy.

Hurricane Betsy, which struck the Gulf Coast in 1965, became known as billion-dollar Betsy. Homes were ruined. Water up to the roofs. People paddling around streets in boats. Massive damage.

This would be the time when you'd expect people to be pulling out their flood insurance policies. But flood insurance was hard to come by. You could get fire insurance, theft insurance, car insurance, life insurance. Not flood.

"There was a lack of data," says Eric Smith, president and CEO of Swiss Re in the Americas. "One of the bedrock principles of insurance is it has to be something that's somewhat measurable. You have be able to calculate its frequency, its severity. How often this going to occur and how much damage is it going to do?"

A few years after Betsy, in 1968, the government decided it would take on the job of selling flood insurance. Some people hated this idea. If private insurance companies wouldn't sell policies to people who wanted to live in flood zones, they argued, why should the government?

This argument did not win the day. The government created flood maps, gathered data, and set up the National Flood Insurance Program.

"I think it generally worked out OK overall, until Katrina," says Mark Browne, a professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "Katrina was a major loss for the National Flood Insurance Program. It blew through its money and went into deficit.

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"This is why flood insurance is a tricky business. You can have a quiet three decades, then a huge hurricane plows into a major city. Suddenly you're back in the red."

Over the past few years, the National Flood Insurance Program has had to borrow $17 billion from the government.

So were the critics right? Is the government running a bad business? Maybe not. After a big national disaster, Browne argues, the government is on the hook anyway. It might as well collect some money by selling insurance.

The head of the National Flood Insurance Program says the program plans to repay the money it borrowed from the government — but it may take 20 or 30 years to do so.

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【计时二】

IMF: Pace of global economic growth is slowing
By Howard Schneider

The Washington Post The pace of global economic growth is slowing and the major developed nations continue to pose the major threats as they battle with high debt and below-par growth, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday in its latest world forecast.

The IMF forecasts world growth of 3.5 percent for 2013, slightly less than the organization projected in its previous report in October.

In a news conference, IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard said he thought current conditions warranted “some cautious optimism” because “acute risks” have decreased — most notably the possibility that the euro currency union might disintegrate.

But he said growth remains weak through much of the developed world and, in particular, is “not enough to make a dent in the unemployment rate” — projected to remain at an elevated 8 percent among industrialized countries.

The fund’s forecast puts it largely in line with that of World Bank economists who last week also projected slowing growth and continued divergence between fast growing economies in Asia and Latin America, stodgy but consistent growth in the United States, and recession in the heart of Europe.

U.S. growth is projected at 2 percent, about a tenth of a percentage point below the IMF’s October figure and a less optimistic forecast than that of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Growth has essentially stalled in Britain and Japan — with Japan projected to grow next year only because of major new government stimulus spending.

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【计时三】

A possible exit by Britain from the European Union could pose another shock in coming years if it disrupts trade or financial ties with the continent. British Prime Minister David Cameron has promised an up-or-down vote on the issue.

But Blanchard said he would “punt” on any discussion of the fallout, because that referendum is several years off.

Prospects for the euro zone remain dimmest of all: The IMF expects the 17-nation currency region to remain in recession for the year. The IMF previously forecast the euro-zone economy would grow by 0.2 percent in 2013. Between tepid growth in Germany and France and continued decline in Italy and Spain, the region’s economy is expected to contract by 0.2 percent over the year.

The forecast is further evidence of how difficult it is proving for the region to impose austerity on public spending and generate short-term growth.

Actions by European governments and the European Central Bank have largely restored stability to European financial markets. But that has not carried through to the broader economy. For example, the central bank of Spain said Wednesday the country’s economy shrank at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in 2012 — a steeper contraction than the IMF’s updated forecast.

There were bright spots that Blanchard said fed his sense of optimism. The United States skirted the “fiscal cliff” at the start of the year, and IMF officials said they expect the level of deficit reduction for 2013 will be “appropriate” — enough to avoid a loss of confidence in bond markets but not so much as to fully undermine growth.

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He also said the buoyant mood in financial markets suggested a gradual return of confidence that should translate into business and household spending, particularly in the United States.

Financial markets “are seeing good things in the future, that the real economy will pick up, that consumers and firms will start investing more,” Blanchard said.

Developing countries are expected to record solid growth of 5.5 percent over the year, led by China at 8.2 percent. That represents a slowdown in China from the 10 percent and higher levels common there in the past 20 years, but it is considered a healthy slowdown as the country relies less on exports and more on internal spending.

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【计时四】

The golden phantom menace
By Zachary Karabell

Earlier this week the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly inflation report. The numbers came in at 1.7 percent a year for all items. Excluding the ever-volatile food and energy, it was 1.9 percent.

That's about as low as inflation has been in the last 50 years. Only 1986 (1.1 percent), 1998 and 2001 (1.6 percent), 2008 (0.1 percent) and 2010 (1.5 percent) have come in lower, and a few years in the mid-2000s registered the same.

The disappearance of inflation over the past 20 years, however, has barely dented the pervasive belief that inflation remains one of the greatest threats to economic stability. These convictions persist in spite of all evidence to the contrary: Inflation is nowhere visible. For many, that is just proof that we are living in a lull -- a phony war soon to be disrupted when that age-old enemy reappears and wreaks havoc.

At the Federal Reserve -- legally mandated guardian of price stability and responsible for monitoring and containing inflation -- the president of the Richmond Fed, Jeffrey Lacker, has been warning that the current policy of very low interest rates and expansion of the balance sheet is almost certain to spark inflation in the near future.

In Europe, those views are even more deeply held. The German Bundesbank -- still seared by memories of hyperinflation in the 1920s and the collapse of political order that gave rise to the Nazis -- remains ever vigilant. Its president, Jens Weidman, is strongly opposed to many of the recent sovereign bailouts to preserve the euro on the grounds that good money chasing bad will spark inflation.

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【计时五】

These officials tend to be firm yet measured in their concern ? something that cannot be said of populist politicians and analysis. The Tea Party is fueled not just by debt animus but by a deep-seated belief that "real" inflation is much higher than what the government reports, and it insists that the spending habits of the government will end in the collapse of the dollar, hyperinflation and the government's de facto stealing from hard-working Americans' money.

That is the fear of gold bugs, and added to the mix are the views of former Representative Ron Paul and his son, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), that the Fed is putting the United States in inflation peril. Many professional investors and economists are similarly convinced that the current policies of zero interest rates and deficit spending are setting the stage for massive inflation.

How to explain the inverse relationship between inflation concerns and inflation realities? Yes, low inflation in recent years has been juxtaposed with modest economic growth and wage stagnation for most Americans ? as well as for most Europeans and Japanese. Given that perceptions of economic well-being are ultimately tied to disposable income, these forces have largely canceled each other out.

In addition, people tend to be acutely aware of the volatility of energy and food prices, which have spiked - and then receded - many times in past years.

Yet even with food and fuel, inflation perceptions can be deceptive. Many people are aware that the price of a loaf of bread has risen from less than 40 cents in the 1970s to an average of more than $2 today. Food prices have also risen periodically over the past few years in the face of global demand and droughts. That cements a perception of inflation.

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Yet over the past few decades, food as an overall percent of income has gone down, down and down. In 1972, Americans spent 15 percent of their disposable income on food; today, that figure is 11 percent. The only shift has been in eating out ? people spend more on restaurants and much less on food at home. And that has happened even as incomes have stagnated. Gasoline, which has fluctuated widely, has maintained a steady share of disposable income for decades, at about 3.5 percent, which is now decreasing because of production from shale oil deposits and ever-more-efficient vehicles.

One of the strongest arguments for vigilance against inflation comes from economists following the dicta of Milton Friedman that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." In that view, the actions of governments and central bankers are the determining factor, and the experience of the 20th century was that inflation often followed government policies, especially promiscuous government spending. Since that is what happened in the past, many are firmly convinced that it will, perforce, happen in the future.

One pernicious cliché is that history repeats itself. It doesn't. Historians repeat each other ? and economists then pile on with theorems based on a limited amount of history that then constitute "laws" of economics.

Unquestionably, inflation was a systemic threat not just in the 20th century but for centuries before. Thus the absence of inflation today is explained as an anomaly soon to end; an artificial state of affairs generated by easy-money policies of governments and central banks around the world; or a false statement in that inflation is underreported by governments interested in pretending it doesn't exist.

The virtue of these arguments is that they are not falsifiable. You can't prove there isn't a government conspiracy about "real" inflation, and you can't prove that something isn't about to happen. If you argue that there has been a systemic shift - that, say, technology and globalization have combined to send manufactured goods ever lower (with food as much a manufactured good as a computer) - you can easily be dismissed for foolishly contending that "this time it's different."

What, then, is the statute of limitations for inflation? How long must there be low, low inflation before the risk of it is judged as de minimus?

Yes, it might rear up in future. Yes, past patterns may prove correct. It would be foolish not to be on guard about the possibility and the risk ? just as it would be foolish not to forget that we still live in a world suffused with nuclear weapons.

Yet it would be equally foolish to ignore the weight of evidence about low inflation everywhere around the globe, not just for the past few years but over the past few decades. The consequences of planning for a war that never happens can be just as deleterious as fighting that war unprepared.
If inflation is not the proximate risk of today's economy, then we are radically misjudging our problems and missing solutions. If inflation is not a dire threat, then we need not be so concerned about government spending or central bank policy. We should instead focus on the ability of our national economies and the global economic system to generate sustainable living standards for billions of people.

Right now, so many are so fixated on inflation that these other challenges receive short shrift. If inflation revives, that fixation may be justified. If not, we will have squandered our time chasing echoes instead of meeting our present with eyes wide open to the possibilities of the future.

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【越障】

What Capitalism Can't Fix
by Phil Buchanan

Increasingly, I see people looking starry-eyed to business and markets to solve social problems. In so doing, they run the risk of dismissing the impact of nonprofits — and diminishing the value of organizations that seek to make a difference without creating the potential conflicts that come with the profit motive. My view is that pretending companies and markets hold all the answers actually puts at risk our ability to deal with our most pressing societal problems — and to help our most vulnerable citizens.

The rhetoric is everywhere — from the trade press to the mainstream media to business school faculty to corporate titans to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Former GE CEO Jack Welch, writing in Business Week, characterized the nonprofit sector as a "foreign land" in which performance is not a priority and employees are guaranteed "lifetime employment." Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, wrote last year on the Wired web site, "Let's be real: The nonprofit model is broken. The 20th-century way of "guilting" people into giving to an opaque, inefficient organization with massive overhead is no longer a viable model." In a recent blog post here on HBR.org, Dan Pallotta suggests that nonprofits should use the tools of capitalism such as high pay and providing returns to investors to increase charitable giving.

The rush to disparage nonprofits and the stampede to embrace the idea that for-profits — or for-profit models — can more easily combat our toughest social problems deny reality. Many crucial objectives simply cannot be accomplished while generating a financial return. Other objectives can but there is a price to be paid. In health care, for example, research indicates a decline in quality when non-profit hospitals switched to become profit making, as Eduardo Porter explained this month in the New York Times.

The laudable push for companies to commit more energy to dealing with social problems should not obscure the need for strong independent nonprofits that focus on mission not profit. And while nonprofits can learn from companies and companies can learn from nonprofits, it is a mistake to deny differences.

After all, there is a crucial distinction between an institution that reinvests surpluses in its mission and one that faces unrelenting pressure to distribute profit to shareholders. Consider higher education in the United States. Nonprofit universities frequently offer an education that costs more than actual tuition — the difference made up through charitable gifts and endowment returns — while for-profit institutions must cover their costs with tuition and create a profit margin. The results — and the evidence from lawsuits, media reports, and congressional and GAO investigations of for-profit universities — speak for themselves.

Despite this and many other cautionary tales, an increasing number of people both inside and outside the nonprofit world seem drunk on the Kool-Aid of business superiority. Too often people equate "business thinking" with effectiveness. Even those inside the world of nonprofits and philanthropy have internalized the idea that operating "like a business" means operating effectively (never asking which business: Countrywide Financial? BP? Enron?).

The stereotypes of nonprofits are just that: stereotypes. There are, of course, numerous examples of nonprofit influence and impact — from work on environmental issues to citizens' rights to reductions in tobacco use to reductions in worldwide child mortality — but also lesser known examples. Take the work of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit whose 18-month campaign to reduce hospital mortality rates has saved an estimated 122,300 lives by inspiring and guiding hospital executives, physicians, and nurses to adopt six basic patient-safety practices. As Peter Fader, a University of Pennsylvania professor and director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, has observed: Nonprofits often excel at using "their data to better understand their 'customer base.' In this area, big companies with lots of resources really can learn from their cash-strapped nonprofit cousins."

The point is this: No type of organization — government, business, or nonprofit — has a monopoly on effectiveness. And nonprofits are typically tackling the most complex problems of all. If those problems could have easily been solved by government or business, they wouldn't exist at all.

I'm a huge believer in free-market capitalism. I have an M.B.A. and have worked as a corporate consultant. But I think we're better off being sober about what markets can and cannot accomplish.

I'd suggest three practical questions to ask in sorting through how to achieve important social goals.

?Does the pursuit of profit conflict with or facilitate the achievement of your goal? How likely are profit and social impact to be in tension? How will that tension be managed or resolved?

?What kind of choices and information do people have? Markets work best when people have choices and when there is good information, so ask, do those conditions apply? Are you looking at an opportunity — like creating products or technologies that will help poor people in some aspect of their lives — that lends itself to a free-market solution? Or are you looking at something, like the management of a prison or nursing home system for a state, where a provider is likely to have a virtual monopoly — meaning management is free to prioritize profit over the social mission without paying any kind of price?

?Finally, are you addressing an issue that actually results from market failure, such as, environmental degradation? If you don't understand capitalism's role in contributing to a problem, you probably won't be able to rely on capitalism to chart a path to the solution.

Then decide what makes most sense, and don't assume that a pure nonprofit isn't the way to go.

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starlitcream

占个沙发啊
1.22
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1.275.59

铁板神猴

好 板凳是我的了~！明早早起阅读~
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TerraceHo

sit~ 當天完成作業yahoo~~獎自己一朵小花堅持！~~
謝謝lzXDD！！
p.s. 找到組織歡樂哇~有愛！~

2013/1/24
[speed]
1'26
Hurricane Besty contributes to the fact that private insurance companies are unwilling to sell flood insurance, and also explains why the federal government takes on this job.
剩餘部份
The government is responsible for the flood insurance through National Flood Insurance Program. And the program collects money by selling insurance.
1'44
IMF predicts that the economic growth of major developed countries is slowing because of the problems of high debt and possible disintegration of euro.
1'48
Britain's possible exit of Euro zone may block the trade or financial ties in the zone. But there are postive points to the markets.
剩餘部份
The financial markets will be relatively optimistic, especially in US. And developing countries will remain a solid economic growth in 2013.
1'58
Although the released monthly inflation report by Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a lower inflation rates, inflation is very possible to break out, considering the low interest rates and the expansion of balance sheet.
2'16
It is widely believed that inflation is coming, for the Fed conducts the policies of zero interest rates and deficit spending.
剩餘部份
The whole passage consolidates the conclusion that inflation is always existent in the history.
[obstacle]
it is false to purely depend on the non-profit organizations to solve the social problems.
-->excessively relying on the non-profit organizations to deal with social problems has risks.
-->the exaggerated influence of non-profit organizations exists everywhere.
-->the power that run a non-profit organization is the mission rather than the profit.
-->there are distinctions between the profit organizations and the non-profit organizations, the former of which concentrate on profit-making and distribution of benefit, whereas the latter of which emphasize the reinvestment in the mission.
-->it is believed that non-profit organizations can be effective when running like a business. but this is absolutely wrong stereotype.
-->3 questions that help to clear the ideas about how to reach important social goals are proposed.

美人夜带刀

明天来做

徒手破鲜橙

我又滚回来了。打卡，下班做。

修一一

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obstacle 4'00

2012Michelle

谢谢Spencer,难得我还在一环。

超喜欢今天的越障内容，对于NGO管理的新思路，赞！

交作业。

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Rest-36"
Time2-1'49"
Time3-1'50"
Rest-38"
Time4-1'29"
Time5-1'57"
Rest-3'35"

Obstacle 5'53"

attractg

复习累了，跟篇作业~~ 话说发现今天的文章好惊喜啊，inflation和下面nonprofit的那篇都超赞~！！！spencer太给力了~

[Speed]

1'01''(269) There was one reason that the government begin to sell Flood Insurance: Betsy. Hurricane Betsy happened in ** caused massive damage. This could be the opportunity to invent the Flood Insurance. However, Flood Insurance is not easy to come by because insurance must be somewhat measurable. Government had decided to take the job of selling flood insurance. However, some people held the opposite idea, but their argument did not win today.

剩余:00'30''

1'05''(248) The Washington Post The pace of global economic growth is slowing and the major developed countries continue to pose the major threats as they battle with high debts and below-par growth. The situation is fast growing economics in Asia,stodgy but consistent growth in America , and recession in the heart of Europe.

1'27''(263) The IMF forecasted the Europe reigion will grow by 0.2 percent in 2013. The prediction also shows evidence of how difficult for the European countries to impose austerity on government spending and generate short-term growth. The U.S.skirted the "Fiscal Cliff" and expected the level of deficit redcution will be "appropriate".

剩余: 00'33''

1'17''(278) In the last 50 years, our inflation rate keep low. The disapperance of inlation rate over the past 20 years has not dented the persuasive belief that inflation is one of the most greatest threats to economic stability. Federal Reserve is response to manage the price stability and monitor the inflation rate. In Someone** has warned that the low interests and the expansion of balance sheet are certain to cause inflation in the future. Europe, those ideas even more deeply held.

1'40''(296) The Tea party said the real inflation rate is much higher than that of government reported. How to explain the reverse relationship between inflation concerns and inflation realities? Low inflation has been juxtaposed with modest economic growth and wage stagnation. People tend to be more accurate to volatility of food and fuel prices. However, even with food and fuel ,the inflation perceptions can be deceptive.

剩余：2’48''(601)

[Obstacle]

5'28''(926)

Main Idea: Blind ideas about for-profits and ways for nonprofits to achieve social goals.
Author's attitude: Neutral
Structure:

Author's main point: People looking starry-eyed to business and markets to solve social problems. In doing so, people dimish the impact of nonprofits and put at risk our ability to deal with pressing social problems and help our vulnerable citizens.

>>DP's point: nonprofits should use the tool of capitalism to increase charitable giving.

Author opposes DP's point: The rush to disparage nonprofit and embrace for-profit models to deal with social problems denys reality. Many crucial objectives cannot be accomplised while generating a financial returns.... e.g. Research indicates a decline in quality when nonprofit hospitals switched to become profit making.

>>Strong independent nonprofits focus on mission not profit. It is a mistake to deny difference when nonprofits and companies learn from each other.

>>eople equal business thinking with "effectiveness".

The stereotypes of nonprofits are just stereotypes. Of course, there are numerous examples of nonprofit influence and impact but also lesser known examples. .. Nonprofit often excel at "using their data to better understand the ‘customer base’ ".

Author opposes: no type of organization—— government, business or nonprofit—— has a monopoly on effectiveness. And nonprofits are typically tackling the most complex problems of the all.

>>Author suggests three practical questions to ask on how to achieve social goals.
1. Does the pursit of profits conflict with the achievement of your goals ?
2. What kind of information and choices do people have？
3. Are you addressing an issue that actually result from any market failure?



生词：juxtaposed v.把...并列 falsifiable a.可以被检验的 deleterious a.有害，有毒的 starry-eyed a.幻想的，过分乐观的 disparage v.轻视，贬低

铁板神猴

读好了~ 真的是很给力呀，对今天的文章很感兴趣，另外越障也非常有逻辑性！

还有attractg的越障回忆越来越给力了嘛！ 加油加油~

TerraceHo的回忆也很不错，赞一个~~